Always Already:

The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness
by Ken Wilber

This excerpt from The Eye of Spirit is described in the introduction as one of the most powerful - and beautiful - pieces of spiritual writing Ken Wilber has ever produced, and I sincerely agree.  With astonishing simplicity and depth he peels away layer after layer of concepts surrounding spiritual seeking and traditional non-dual practices, pushing through and beyond experience to find the experiencer - what he calls the Seer or the ever-present Witness. 

Things that are seen come and go, are happy or sad, pleasant or painful—but the Seer is none of those things, and it does not come and go. The Witness does not waver, does not wobble, does not enter that stream of time. The Witness is not an object, not a thing seen, but the ever-present Seer of all things, the simple Witness that is the I of Spirit, the center of the cyclone, the opening that is God, the clearing that is pure Emptiness.
 
Every time I recognize or acknowledge the ever-present Witness, I have broken the Great Search and undone the separate self. And that is the ultimate, secret, nondual practice, the practice of no-practice, the practice of simple acknowledgment, the practice of remembrance and recognition, founded timelessly and eternally on the fact that there is only Spirit, a Spirit that is not hard to find but impossible to avoid.

Here are some lines from Wilber's exquisite description of the freedom that comes from resting in that ever-present, pure and simple witness:

I am no longer caught up in the search for experiences, whether of the flesh or of the mind or of the spirit. Experiences simply come and go like endless waves on the ocean of what I am. As I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I am no longer moved to follow the bliss and the torture of experiential displays. Experiences float across my Original Face like clouds floating across the clear autumn sky, and there is room in me for all.

When I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I will even begin to notice that the Witness itself is not a separate thing or entity, set apart from what it witnesses. All things arise within the Witness, so much so that the Witness itself disappears into all things.
 
And thus, resting in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I notice that there is no inside and no outside. There is no subject and no object. Things and events are still fully present and clearly arising—the clouds float by, the birds still sing, the cool breeze still blows—but there is no separate self recoiling from them. Events simply arise as they are, without the constant and agitated reference to a contracted self or subject. Events arise as they are, and they arise in the great freedom of not being defined by a little I looking at them. They arise with Spirit, as Spirit, in the opening or clearing that I am; they do not arise to be seen and perceptually tortured by an ego.

I am simply an opening or clearing in which all things arise. I notice that all things arise in me, arise in this opening or clearing that I am. The clouds are floating by in this vast opening that I am. The sun is shining in this vast opening that I am. The sky exists in this vast opening that I am; the sky is in me. I can taste the sky, it's closer to me than my own skin. The clouds are on the inside of me; I am seeing them from within. When all things arise in me, I am simply all things. The universe is One Taste, and I am That.

But how can we, resting as ever-present awareness, interact with the things and events which are still, as he puts it, fully present and clearly arising? How can we fulfill our yearning to offer our unique gifts to the world?

It is simply that, as embodied being, you also arise in the world of form that is your own manifestation. And the intrinsic potentials of the enlightened mind - such as equanimity, discriminating wisdom, mirror-like wisdom, ground consciousness, and all-accomplishing awareness - combine with the native dispositions and particular talents of your own individual bodymind.  And thus, when the separate self dies into the vast expanse of its own ever-present awareness, you will arise animated by any or all of those various enlightened potentials. You are then motivated, not by the Great Search, but by the Great Compassion of these potentials, some of which are gentle, some of which are truly wrathful, but all of which are simply the possibilities of your own ever-present state.
   
And whatever the form of your own resurrection, you will arise driven not by the Great Search, but by your own Great Duty, your limitless Dharma, the manifestation of your own highest potentials, and the world will begin to change, because of you.

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That is just a tiny sampling of Wilber's amazing offering to us - a re-membering of our own ever-present awareness - this free and empty Seer, this spacious opening and clearing in which all things arise.  Please take the time to read the whole piece - and if you think it worthwhile, please share it with others.
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If you liked what you read here, a related post at  Signs of the Times  is well worth a click.  David invites us in with a quote from John Sherman:

"To look at yourself just once, and then again, and then again... is to move from the endless work of self-definition to the endless adventure of self-discovery."

and adds, "In spending our lives learning to tell our story, mostly to ourselves, we really only meet ourselves in terms of either reflections of our bodies in a mirror or in comparing concepts we have of our “self” with what we imagine other “selves” are or think, etc.  Self-definition  …  hard and frustrating work, that nobody really has to do.  Who cares?  John is talking about looking directly at our experience of being alive, of existing … without regard for what we find or not."  The post, with links to some of John Sherman's work, is HERE.

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when the current of thoughts is self-liberated
and the essence of dharma is known
everything is understood
and apparent phenomena are all the books one needs
- Sadhana of Mahamudra
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